Daily Human Digest
Every day, the staff of the Genetic Literacy Project scours the Web for stories on a range of human genetics issues, including gene editing, regulations and bioethics, gene therapy, epigenetics, personal genomics, evolution, ancestry and artificial intelligence. We publish excerpts of those stories and encourage our readers to visit the original publications for the complete stories.
Do obesity and mental illness share genetic links?
If a person with high genetic vulnerability is exposed to adverse environmental factors, such as an infection or mental trauma, ...
Brain organoids ‘giving insight’ into origins of autism, epilepsy and schizophrenia
Knowing how the human brain develops is critical to understanding how things can go awry in neurodevelopmental disorders, from intellectual ...
Amish people study suggests environmental factors influence mutations causing disease and evolution more than genes
The rate of new mutations in the human genome appear to be consistent across diverse populations, except one—the Old Order ...
‘My entire goal is to basically age in reverse’: How biohackers are attempting to engineer longer lives
When day breaks, they go out in their yard and face the rising sun — Thaddeus [Owen] in shorts and ...
‘Intrepid explorers’: Neanderthals hunted their way across thousands of miles in Europe
Neandertals were epic wanderers. These ancient hominids took a 3,000- to 4,000-kilometer hike from Eastern Europe to the Altai Mountains ...
Alzheimer’s link to herpes disputed in new study
Around 30 years ago, researchers in the UK discovered DNA strands of herpes simplex virus 1 in postmortem brain samples of Alzheimer’s ...
Ancient mummy ‘speaks’ with reconstructed vocal tract
David Howard at Royal Holloway, University of London, and his colleagues have reconstructed the vocal tract of Nesyamun, a priest ...
Was Darwin wrong about ‘survival of the fittest’? Collaboration may be just as natural as competition
To put it simply, we have let Darwinism set the horizon of possibility for human behavior. Competition has become a ...
Living without a sense of smell brings feelings of isolation and peril, study says
A recent study is one of the first to highlight the plights faced by a small segment of the population: ...
Mosquitoes engineered to resist dengue could become gene drive weapon against the deadly disease
Locked in a secure lab near Melbourne is the newest addition in the fight against dengue: genetically engineered mosquitoes that ...
DNA from 4 ancient children shed light on diversity of humankind’s African origins
Four ancient youngsters, one pair from around 8,000 years ago and another from about 3,000 years ago, have opened a ...
Psychosomatic disorders not ‘all in the mind’: Brain-body connection bolstered by new research
Placebo effects, exercise highs, getting sick when you’re stressed out—the popular press and the scientific literature alike are replete with ...
Dementia’s ‘biological weak spot’: A single mutation helped this woman evade Alzheimer’s for decades
A cruel twist of genetic fate brought Alzheimer’s disease to a sprawling Colombian family. But thanks to a second twist, ...
Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop: Is she trolling us while ‘laughing all the way to the bank?’
[Gwyneth Paltrow's] Goop first gained notoriety in 2015 when it encouraged women to "steam clean" their vaginas (you already know ...
People with autism more likely to experience headaches and epilepsy
People with autism have more brain-related health problems, such as headaches and epilepsy, than typical people do, according to a ...
No ancient ‘Garden of Eden’? Humans likely evolved all over Africa
The evolution and spread of Homo sapiens is perhaps one of the greatest mysteries in all of science. Until recently, it was ...
Searching for answers in the genome of China’s mysterious coronavirus
As public health officials respond in real-time to the unfolding of the outbreak, so too are scientists. Just one month ...
Video: Placebo effect or powerful antidepressant? Understanding the science of psychedelic microdosing
Individuals who microdose mushrooms, or those who microdose LSD, claim to experience an elevated mood, increased productivity, and a greater ...
DNA cracks 1980 cold case: Gene analysis leads to arrest of Florida’s ‘Pillowcase rapist’
Authorities believe a Florida man arrested last weekend is the so-called Pillowcase Rapist and is responsible for a string of ...
Autism may not ‘hardwired by genetics’, with severity shaped by early life experiences, claims researchers in yet unpublished study
A child’s environment exerts a strong influence on the severity of her autism, according to a study of 78 pairs ...
Global temperature modeling suggests dinosaurs were wiped out by asteroid strike
A massive asteroid impact is likely to blame for the extinction event that marks the end of the Cretaceous period, ...
23andMe just used your genetic data to create a drug for psoriasis
Of the genetic testing company's more than 10 million users, a vast majority have consented to have their DNA used in ...
We’ve mapped a fly brain down ‘to the very last neuron’. That’s a big deal for human brain research
[A]s director of Janelia Research Campus, part of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, [Gerry Rubin has] spent the last 12 ...
Re-engineering yeast to create biofuel appears possible, ‘but the effort involved is intimidating’
A little while ago, we covered the idea of using photovoltaic materials to drive enzymatic reactions in order to produce specific chemicals ...
Interbreeding with Neanderthals, Denisovans gave us an evolutionary boost, study says
When Homo sapiens left Africa and encountered the Homo neanderthalensis in Europe, the two ancient hominins did the obvious thing and had sex with ...
Zika virus could offer new way to attack deadly brain cancers
New research has revealed that the Zika virus breaks into brain cells by using a special molecular key, and scientists ...
If we started again from scratch, would life on Earth evolve the same way?
Evolution is often seen as a mysterious process, but it’s actually predictable, and if life on Earth evolved again it ...
